computoman

One of my special projects is to help keep older computer equipment viable. This can be especially important for those who are less privileged.  Most people have heard of the "Iron Chef" TV shows where chefs are challenged with ingredients and limited equipment to prepare a meal for the guests. Thinking in that vein, why not sort of combine the two, but without a time limit per se. Your goal is to make a networkable pentium one computer act as a home automation controller. You will be using and Intel Pentium I system that has a floppy drive, 3com network interface card, and a two gig hard drive. You will get to use a monitor just long enough to set up the system. You also get a bootable dos disk with the system plus, bootable dos wattcp disk (with the tcpip stack), and two blank floppies.. You will also have free access to the internet from another system (using Linux of course or another os if you must). You get no other software. (Hint. Hint. internet access.) We nee...

Web servers are awesome as you can do so much from home automation to what ever your imagination can dream up. If you have an extra computer this is a great way to put it to use instead of sending it to a landfill! One way we use our web server is with a Chumby. We like to use our Chumby (touchpad) in connection with our home server. The Chumby is not exactly portable. I love our Infocast Insignia (aka Chumby) 8″. Using it I made sort of an ipad clone and it runs Linux!! I control all the home automation from it and it is great for accessing our intranet based w eb server from the kitchen to access recipes and many other applications). Becoming addicted to php and mysql as well as html. May get a second one for a low powered server like I used to do with the Cisco Linksys Nslu2. Can not wait to see how well it works with mythwebtv. Need to build a new server first. 64bit here we come. Yep, we are bit behind using only 32 bit single core cpu based computers. Picture of a...

This sort of a summary of the projects we have done. (just some links). Do you really need an ereader? http://www.instructables.com/id/Ereader-is-optional-by-using-your-portable-music-p/ http://www.instructables.com/id/Ereader-is-optional-by-using-your-portable-music-p-1/ Every home needs a web server! http://www.instructables.com/id/Cheap-touchpad/ http://www.instructables.com/id/Uses-for-your-own-private-cloud/ http://www.instructables.com/id/Introduction-to-installing-web-apps/ http://www.instructables.com/id/Quicky-web-server-for-linux/ http://www.instructables.com/id/Quicky-web-server-for-MSWindows-XP/ Home automation basics: http://www.instructables.com/id/Home-Automation-MSWindows-XP/ http://www.instructables.com/id/Linux-beginning-home-automation-on-a-server/ Other: http://www.instructables.com/id/Linux-ghetto-Tele-prompter/ http://www.instructables.com/id/Computerized-video-security-setup/ http://www.instructables.com/id/Setting-up-a-computer-based-DVR-with-Mythtv-for-l...